


I've Got You, Brother

by platonicharmonics



Series: In The Shape Of Longing [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Autistic Keith (Voltron), Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Keith and Shiro are Adoptive Siblings, Team as Family, Trans Shiro (Voltron)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-03
Updated: 2017-07-03
Packaged: 2018-11-22 16:46:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11384286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/platonicharmonics/pseuds/platonicharmonics
Summary: After Shiro's disappearance in the aftermath of the Paladins' fight with Zarkon, Keith reflects on their life together, and - eventually, with the help of his team - grieves.





	I've Got You, Brother

**Author's Note:**

> You can blame absolutely all of this on the song and music video "[Brother](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6TXPNybrmk)" by Kodaline.
> 
> PS: While this fic is technically part of a series and takes place in the same timeline, each fic can stand on its own.

Keith walked into the control room and was met with an oppressive silence.

One by one, his teammates turned to look at him with watery eyes except Allura. Pidge stood rigid with her arms crossed over her chest, biting her lip; Lance and Hunk were huddled together, heads bowed and jaws clenched; Coran turned away from Allura to stare at him sullenly and slightly extend an arm in invitation. Allura stood with her back to him, hands clenched down onto the Castle controls, her shoulders and back muscles taut. When Keith got closer, he saw her eyes screwed shut and her mouth twisted into a grimace with some strange mixture of anger and fear.

Shiro’s face smiled down at them all from his Paladin picture projected on the screen next to the universal map. At first Keith thought the room was filled with stars, but he finally realized that the thousands of blue lights floating around the room weren’t clusters of stars, but clusters of galaxies, slowly growing in number the further Allura reached. Every few ticks or so, the soft frosted spirals would pulse red. _NO SIGNATURE_ flashed endlessly on the screens.

Keith passed Coran to stand next to Allura, who was beginning to tremble. He looked up and stared long and hard at Shiro’s picture. Almost every part of his face had changed. His smile was more tired. The bags under his eyes were darker. Beyond the deep, harsh scar that carved itself through his face, worry-lines chiseled their way into the corners of his eyes and his mouth. The shock of white hair asserted itself against the natural black. His skin had paled from long exposure to darkness and malnutrition. 

But his eyes were the same.

\--

The Arizona desert didn’t look that different from New Mexico’s, or even from Texas’s, as it whipped by the window of the bus. Keith stared at it, watching the cacti and dunes and buttes roll by as he rested his head against the rattling glass, jolting every time the bus hit a larger-than-average bump and the window dug a bruise into his temple. He idly fidgeted with the straps of his backpack where it rested between his knees on the floor while his social worker endlessly tapped away on her phone. 

He jerked upright once he saw the shining billboard proclaiming _WELCOME TO THE GALAXY GARRISON_ backlit by the red of the setting sun. Pushing himself up on the seat, he stared intently ahead and latched onto the seat in front of him, white-knuckled. The sprawling space facility appeared as they crested the next dune, looking like a diamond embedded in the sand.

It was a miracle that _this_ was where he was going for seventh grade.

By all accounts, he shouldn’t qualify to go to _any_ school, let alone enter into a competitive mentor sponsorship program for full-paid tuition to the world’s greatest private space academy and actually be _chosen_. Someone looked at his application, saw that he was an autistic orphan shuffled around over a dozen foster homes, group homes, and shelters; saw that his elementary school legacy was a sea of Ds and Fs; saw that he was suspended three times and spent a stint in a joint juvenile detention and mental health center, and said “Yes, this one. I choose this one.”

Keith knew that the sponsors in the program were filthy rich Galaxy Garrison University honors students and Galaxy Garrison Academy alumni, but he was fully expecting his sponsor and future mentor to either be the local weirdo or an insufferable Freedom Writers type who snatched up the first poor inner-city kid of color they saw.

The bus passed through the main gates into the courtyard to add itself to the already sizeable throng of buses and cars. His social worker tapped him on the shoulder to urge him to hurry up and rose to file into the hall; Keith snatched his bag and rushed after her off of the bus and onto the asphalt, sticking out like a sore thumb among the herd of gussied-up kids in his stained tank-top, cargo shorts, and hand-me-down light-up Sketchers.

“This way,” his social worker prompted, finally putting her phone away to gesture forward and smile at him. “He said he’ll be waiting at the front doors.”

She professionally escorted him through the milling crowd of shrieking teens and fussing parents towards the entrance to the main building – the towering, humming, strange-looking building. She held open the door for him, and he stepped into the elegantly lit entrance hall with its arched ceiling and marble floor and fountain and chandelier. Keith closed his hanging mouth with a click when his social worker said, “That’s him over there.”

He followed her pointed finger towards a young East Asian man with dark olive skin in an orange-and-white Garrison student uniform talking with a small group of University students. Keith stood frozen until she nudged him forward, and he haltingly stumbled towards him.

The man must have saw him out of the corner of his eye, because he dropped the conversation mid-sentence, turned towards him, and beamed, hurrying to meet him half-way. That was when Keith realized how _tall_ he was – what was he, six-foot-four?

“Hey! You’re Keith, right?” the man prompted, extending his hand. Keith shrank back; to his shock, the man didn’t make a big deal out of it and just stuck his hands in his pockets. “I’m Takashi Shirogane, your sponsor, but everybody just calls me Shiro. We’re gonna be working together a lot during your time here. I’ll kinda be like an advisor and tutor- and a buddy, if you need one. So what do you say, kiddo? You excited to be a _space cadet?_ ”

He couldn’t tell if the guy was faking his enthusiasm, but something about him felt… genuine. He made eye contact to test a theory – his stare was “weird” according to most adults, and the bad ones usually snapped at him about being disrespectful. Takashi just met it with a smile. His eyes were a dark, stormy gray, and they would’ve been cold if not for the sheer unbridled _life_ in them.

Keith smiled back.

\--

Keith frowned.

The training dummy dropped at his feet and dematerialized, cleaved in half by his sword. A new one was deposited onto the training floor and he rushed it immediately, barely giving it enough time to become operational before it was blocking his assault.

The dummy braced against a particular heavy swing and used his force to throw him back. He heard the door to the training room open as he rolled and raised his sword just in time to block the blade cleaving down towards his head and divert it to the side, using the same motion to slam his pommel into its neck. He spun out of its retaliating swipe and stepped behind it, thrusting forwards – the bones in his wrist groaned with the force of its blade when its broadside slammed into his, the two swords making a harsh grinding noise as they struggled against each other.

He leapt to the side and ducked back in; using both hands to hold his sword above his head to block the incoming blow, he kicked out his leg and pushed off the dummy’s pelvis, forcing it to stumble backwards, off-balance. In one swift motion, he spun and beheaded it. Its body dematerialized before it hit the ground.

“Uhh, is the Castle possessed again?!”

Keith panted and wiped his sweat-drenched bangs out of his eyes as he turned towards Lance. He dematerialized his bayard and the newly-formed dummy powered down. “No.”

Lance was standing near the wall in his casual clothes, his arms tightly crossed in front of his chest, sucking in his cheeks. He blew them out suddenly in a sigh and started walking towards him. “Are you sure you should be fighting them on such a high setting?” He balked at the look Keith gave him, so he rose his hands placatingly once he got close enough. “Just because of… you know, the state you’re in?” he murmured.

“I’m fine,” Keith said, voice dull.

Lance’s brow furrowed, the corners of his mouth turning downwards. “You wanna change out of your armor and join us for lunch?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Keith…” Lance hedged, fidgeting. “You haven’t eaten in days.”

Keith shrugged. “I’m fine.”

“ _Keith_.” Lance bristled and looked torn, eyes darting away for a moment before he said, “Shiro wouldn’t want-”

“Shut up.”

Something shifted in Lance’s expression, meaning something had shifted in Keith’s. Lance took a step back and shook his head, looking at him with doe-eyed concern. He cleared his throat. “I’m… I’m gonna bring you a dish, okay?”

Keith shrugged again. “Whatever.”

Lance hesitated for a long moment, then sighed and walked towards the door. Keith holstered his bayard and raised his fists. The dummy powered on again, sensing his combat stance. “Change combat mode to level 1,” he said, quietly. The dummy sheathed its sword and raised fists instead.

\--

Shiro’s fists came swiftly, one after another – Keith dutifully repeated the blocking methods he showed him, redirecting the punches away from himself for a few seconds before he managed to latch onto Shiro’s wrist and turn into him, hooking his ankle around Shiro’s and using his momentum against him, making him fall onto his back on the mat.

Shiro sat up and laughed, pulling up his baggy T-shirt to wipe the sweat off his forehead. “That was good, man! Good job!” 

Keith stood back and panted, throwing his long hair back out of his face with a small, pleased smile. “Thanks.” He extended a hand out to Shiro once he started to get up, and Shiro flashed him a thankful grin as he accepted it and let Keith help pull him onto his feet.

The two of them were in the Garrison’s massive student gym, enjoying the solitude of the dead hour before curfew when Keith didn’t have to worry about too many loud noises and Shiro didn’t have to worry about people staring at his breasts or pointing out his sports-bra straps. The gym had everything – a weightlifting section, a cardio section, a track surrounding its perimeter, and a boxing/fighting section. Normally, the two of them would alternate between arms, legs, abs, and cardio, but every Tuesday and Thursday Shiro took Keith to the fighting mats and drilled him on self-defense techniques.

What confused Keith the most was that Shiro only started the self-defense training four months after they met and three months after they started going to the gym together. 

Keith took three huge gulps from his water bottle, closed it, and dropped it back into his bag, turning to Shiro where he was still nursing his. “Hey Shiro?”

“Mm?” Shiro prompted around his water.

“Why did you start teaching me all this anyway?”

Shiro’s expression immediately darkened. He studiously screwed the cap back onto his water bottle and swallowed. “You know why.”

“No, I don’t.”

Shiro set his water bottle down and sighed, finally looking at Keith. “Because… Because of what you told me.”

“What I told you?”

Shiro tilted his head, his expression drawn tight. “What your last foster family did to you. What those kids in that group home did to you. What the man in that shelter did to you. What that _other_ foster-” Shiro’s voice choked up and he turned to stare out of the gym’s window, grinding his teeth. His eyes looked a little wet.

Keith blinked. That night when Shiro sat on the roof with him through a panic attack after his roommate hugged him from behind and he ended up bleeding his past all over him came back like bile on the back of his tongue. “I still don’t understand why you started teaching me all this. I could fight before.”

“You could throw a punch, but you couldn’t defend yourself. I want you to be _safe_.”

Keith hugged himself and glanced around the room. “Why do you even care? You only need to worry about me when I’m at the Garrison. This is home stuff.”

Shiro snapped his gaze over to him and furrowed his brow, his eyes growing wide. “I- I care about you because you’re a _good kid_ , Keith, and I want you to be safe and happy no matter _where_ you are. I’m not just here for you as an advisor, I’m here for you as someone who gives a damn.”

Keith hugged himself tighter and swallowed, hard. Shiro noticed – of course he did – and immediately came over, lowering himself to one knee in front of him, expression rapidly softening. “Hey, what’s wrong?” he prompted, gently. “I’m sorry about the swear.”

Keith shook his head and huffed. “It’s not that,” he drawled. He struggled for a moment, searching for words. “You’re the only one.”

“I’m the only one? One of what?”

Keith blinked, and a tear escaped. “The only one who gives a damn.”

Shiro’s face crumpled. He opened his arms in invitation, and Keith accepted, falling to his knees on the mat and leaning in. Shiro wrapped him up in his arms and held him firmly, carding a hand through his hair.

Keith slowly worked his arms out of each other and around Shiro, fisting his shirt in his hands. “All the stuff about my past… all my brain stuff… you’re the only one who really listened. You’re the only person I trust.”

Shiro’s hold tightened for a moment. “You deserve more than just me. You deserve an entire support network that listens and cares about you. I want you to have that here.”

Keith clenched his jaw and tucked his forehead into the crook of Shiro’s neck. “My foster family doesn’t want me to be here.”

“The foster family that told you you’d flunk out?” 

“My social worker had to talk them into it. I might not be coming back next year, and this semester’s almost over.”

Shiro’s entire body went still. Keith listened to his slow, quiet breathing for a long while until he heard Shiro murmur something. He lifted his head. “Huh?”

Shiro leaned back and let go of him, moving his hands to rest on his knees. He looked him in the eye and said, “What if I adopted you?”

Keith’s entire body went cold. His heart stopped. His ears started ringing.

“. . . –th? Keith? _Keith?_ ”

Tears spilled over to run down his cheeks. “You’d do that?” he squeaked.

Shiro gave him a watery smile. “Yeah. I can start the process first thing tomorrow morning.”

Keith launched himself into Shiro’s chest and tackled him to the mat.

\--

“. . . –th? Keith? _Keith?_ ”

Keith blinked hard and shook his head. “Huh?”

Hunk’s face was hovering in front of him, drenched in worry. His eyebrows formed a tent and his mouth was sunken into a frown. He looked like a puppy.

Keith glanced around the room and saw that he’d somehow wandered into the kitchen. “Huh.”

“Are you okay, dude?” Hunk prompted.

“I’m fine.”

Hunk shook his head suddenly and scrunched up his face, waving his hands. “Nevermind, Stupid question. You just say the same thing.” He sighed and slumped. “What are you doing in here?”

“I… I don’t know.”

Hunk’s expression instantly morphed back into worry. “Have you eaten today?”

“Lance brought me a… bowl. Earlier.”

“Dude… that was yesterday.”

“Oh.” Keith turned around and pressed his back against the counter, taking a deep breath. “Oh.” He slowly slid down to the floor.

Hunk lowered himself down to sit beside him. “Are you okay with being touched right now?”

Keith thought about it. He nodded.

Hunk scooted closer to him and pressed their sides flush together, leaning on him a little. Hunk’s warm, heavy weight against his side made it a little easier to breathe. Keith leaned back into him, and Hunk wrapped his arm around his waist.

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

“Dude…”

“We’re going to find him.”

Hunk frowned, then looked away at the far wall. He used his free arm to hug himself. “It’s still really scary.”

Keith licked his lips and swallowed. “…Yeah.”

They sat in silence for several minutes. Keith burrowed into Hunk’s warmth a little more.

“You know we’re all here for you, right?”

Keith glanced up at Hunk from the corner of his eye. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I can tell you’re pushing all of us away. You’re… You’re like, folding in on yourself. Dissociating a lot. You’re not eating, and we can tell you’re not sleeping, and just sort of all-around not taking care of yourself.”

“Well,” Keith started, then stopped. He slumped. “I just… I _hate_ it. I _hate_ this. I hate feeling like I’m spending one second not looking for him when those seconds could mean the difference between life or death.”

“But you realize there’s nothing we can do, right? We could go back to the last place we know he was, but it’s swarming with the bulk of the entire Galra military right now and we already scanned that region nine times. We could go out in the Lions and try manually looking for him, but if _Allura_ can’t find his quintessence, neither would we, and that leaves us searching the entire universe with no leads. All of us plus Allura and Coran tried connecting with the Black Lion to get her to show us where he is, but she’s completely shut herself down. We- we just can’t _do anything_ , and it _sucks_ , and I hate it too, because I feel so _powerless_.”

Keith pulled his knees to his chest and hugged them. “…Yeah.”

“But none of us are alone in this. Okay? We’re right here.” Hunk squeezed him tighter. “Do you want to help me run diagnostics on the Lions after I get some food in you? I need someone to crawl through the main battery shaft and get readings on the power draws from that last fight. It could help us understand what happened inside Black.”

A smile flickered across Keith’s face. “I’d really, really like that, Hunk. Thank you.”

\--

Shortly after Shiro adopted Keith, he applied for a family unit in on-campus housing so they could stay over breaks and summers. Shiro had no family to go back to either after he lost his parents four years ago, so their lives revolved around the Galaxy Garrison. Part of it was because they had nowhere else to go, but their mutual love of spaceflight helped astronomically, and the 2-bedroom campus apartment was home enough.

It wasn’t long after they started living together that the nightmares started. Keith used to just stay up until he passed out from exhaustion into dreamless sleep, sparing his roommate, but Shiro wanted him to have a stable sleeping schedule, harping on endlessly about circadian rhythms. Keith couldn’t say no to him, but he ended up waking him more often than not with his noises, no matter how hard he tried to suppress them. If Keith yelped _once_ , Shiro was there in his doorway.

The worst part was that Shiro refused to go back to bed until he believed Keith wasn’t in any emotional distress. Keith lost track of how many times he told him that he’d be fine and to just leave him and go back to bed, but that only made Shiro even more determined to hover. He couldn’t remember who suggested it first, but on bad nights that couldn’t be solved by a back rub and a cup of tea, he’d just climb into Shiro’s bed and use his lap as a nest. Keith got the reassurance that he wasn’t alone or back in one of the old homes or shelters, and Shiro got to fall asleep against the wall with either a sleeping Keith or bored-out-of-his-mind Keith as a heavy and reassuring weight against his chest.

There was one night, however, that was worse than usual.

Keith sucked in a strangled gasp of air and started screaming, reaching out. There were hands on him – pulling back, holding him down, preventing him from going after- going after- He shrieked and flailed, crying, and they let go. Someone was chanting something.

“Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, Keith- Keith- Hey, it’s me, Keith it’s me, it’s Shiro, hey, look at me-”

Keith gulped in a ragged gasp of air and blinked the tears out of his eyes, curling into himself. Shiro was kneeling beside his bed, wide-eyed in the dark, still in his three-sizes-too-big-nightshirt and boxers. Keith hiccupped. “Shiro?”

“Yeah, buddy. It’s me.”

Keith crawled across the mattress and latched onto his neck, grabbing fistfuls of his shirt as he cried through clenched teeth. Shiro ran a hand through his hair and used the other one to rub soothing circles into his back. The heavy sensation of loss washed over him like a tidal wave, lingering from his nightmare, and he went limp.

Shiro had been murmuring soothing nonsense phrases the whole time, like ‘It’s all right,’ ‘It’s okay,’ and ‘It was just a bad dream.’ He finished with, “Do you want to tell me what it was about?”

Keith slowly sat up out of Shiro’s grasp and crossed his legs on the bed, wiping his tears away with the back of his hand. “I don’t remember.”

Shiro frowned. “Do you want me to make you some tea to help you go back to sleep aga-”

“ _No!_ ” Keith snapped his head up to look at him. “I don’t want to go back to sleep. Please.”

“Keith…”

“I know I have class tomorrow but I’m not going back to sleep. Screw that.”

Shiro sighed and stood up. “You can use my bed again. Like we’ve been doing.”

Keith was on the verge of hyperventilating. “No. I don’t want to be inside or still right now. I’m going outside for a walk.” He jumped out of bed and rushed for his shoes.

“Keith, _wait_.”

“You’re not stopping me,” he snapped.

Shiro appeared at his side. “You want to get out of here, go outside, and do something that can make you just _stop thinking_ , right?” Keith paused after putting one sock on. He slowly looked up at Shiro, who winked at him, a little melancholy. “I have an idea.”

Keith straightened. “Shiro… you _just_ got hired as an adjunct instructor for next semester. Smuggling a student out after curfew is against regs. You could lose your job.”

“Acknowledged. Now get dressed.” With that, Shiro strode determinedly to his room.

Fifteen minutes later, the two of them were sneaking alongside the main building on light feet, dressed comfortably and casually – Keith in T-shirt, jeans, and jacket, and Shiro in jeans and a hoodie, but only because Keith slapped Shiro’s binder out of his hands and scolded him about overdoing it. Shiro rolled his eyes to the moon, but grabbed the nearest sports bra.

Shiro stopped them once they came to a ventilation window near the ground and jimmied it open with his multi-tool. With effort, he pulled it up and out, creating just enough room to squeeze through. Nodding, he looked at Keith and motioned his head towards the gap.

“Are you sure you’re gonna be able to make it through here with those big shoulders?” Keith teased, even as he crawled towards the window.

Shiro smacked his foot. “That’s why I’m having your scrawny little string-bean butt go through first. Do you even lift, bruh?”

Keith smiled. “Shut up.” He crawled the rest of the way through the window and, using a ceiling pipe as leverage, dropped down into a dark room that smelled heavily of burnt metal and oil. Shiro crawled in behind him feet first and dropped down, then deftly walked over to the wall and hit the light switch.

Keith shielded his eyes for a long moment, but after they adjusted, he blinked into view a large concrete garage filled with a combat dune rover, an armored truck, and-

“A _hoverbike?_ ”

Shiro beamed at him as he walked up to the craft, beckoning Keith after him. Keith reverently ran his hands over the seat and handles, peered through the windshield, and poked at one of the wings with his boot. When he looked up at Shiro again, the mirth in his expression was taken over by something heavier.

“After my parents died my senior year in the Academy, I was a mess. I lost sight of a lot of things and just sort of… shut down. Matt got me through finals, and then stayed with me over summer instead of going home to his family. One night he snuck me down here and stole this hoverbike, and we went joy-riding in the desert and stargazing. It probably saved my life.”

Keith’s opinion of Shiro’s best friend rose considerably.

“So is that what we’re gonna do tonight?” he prompted, bouncing on the balls of his feet and flapping his hands a little.

Shiro’s grin returned. “I figured I’d take things a step further and teach you how to drive this thing.” Keith’s eyes went wide and his flapping increased tenfold. Shiro’s laugh echoed through the garage.

Two hours later, the two of them were racing through the desert, the icy-cold wind whipping across their cheeks and through their hair. The lights from the hoverbike bathed the sands in blue, both chasing away the shadows of the night and casting stark ones of its own. The hulking silhouettes of the buttes and mesas rolled slowly by, and the stars swirled above them. The roar and vibrations of the bike resonated through Keith’s bones and into his heart, and as Shiro coached him to lean into the tight turn ahead with steady hands on his shoulders, he was the happiest he’d ever been in his life.

\--

“Hey.”

Keith looked up to see Pidge in the doorway of the port-side observatory. “Hey.”

Without a word, Pidge walked in to sit beside him on the floor in front of the floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall window overlooking the cosmos, mirroring Keith by crossing her legs underneath her. They sat in silence for a while, listening only to each other’s breathing and the faint thrum of the Castle’s engines as the stars silently migrated across their vision.

Eventually, Pidge said, “You ran away from Hunk and Lance and freaked them out a little.”

Keith frowned and picked at the fabric of his pants. “I wanted to be alone.”

“I think they can be draining sometimes, too.”

Keith looked at her out of the corner of his eye. She glanced at him knowingly, an eyebrow quirked. He sighed. “I feel bad about it.”

“Well, don’t. Sometimes you just need space. I should know. We’re really similar.”

Keith didn’t know what to say, so he just shrugged.

The easy silence stretched between them for several more minutes until Pidge finally said, “I know what it’s like to lose your brother.”

Keith stared intently at a constellation. “That’s what I said to you after you decided to stay with us.”

“Yup. You said that, and then pointed to Shiro and said, ‘But I got him back. And if I got my brother back, you’ll get yours back too.’” Pidge dropped her gaze to her lap. “It helped.”

“Yeah, well,” Keith huffed, bitter. “Guess it was all just a crock of bull.”

“I didn’t get my brother back. We never found him. But… I’ve never lost hope. I _know_ he’s still out there.” Keith turned his head away from her to stare at the floor. He heard her scoot closer. “I talked with Shiro. The night before the assault on Zarkon.”

Keith hunched in on himself and side-eyed her. He didn’t know what she was playing at.

Pidge just continued to stare him, her eyes sincere and her mouth a stern line. “I was working myself up into a panic over what might happen or _had_ happened to Matt and Dad. Shiro talked me down and rationalized it to me. He said, ‘Think about what we know as fact. What do we know?’”

When Keith said nothing, she raised her brow, expectant. He scowled. “Virtually nothing.”

“The Black Lion had a massive energy surge after Zarkon’s mech was destroyed and then went offline. Shiro disappeared sometime during or after that energy surge, but that’s all we know. And that’s not enough information to form any conclusions.”

“You’re _not helping_ , Pidge.”

“Let me finish,” Pidge snapped. “We’re not powerless. That’s another thing he told me. We’re not powerless, it’s just that we can only use our power in specific ways. At the end of the day, there’s only two outcomes to consider.”

Keith tilted his head. “What are the two outcomes?”

Pidge sat up straight and set her shoulders back. “We either find them, or we don’t. And I intend to find them.” She pulled the photograph of her and her brother out of her pocket and held it reverently for a moment before showing him. As he looked at Pidge and Matt smiling together, his arm around her shoulders, his anger slowly bled out of him. Pidge huffed a laugh. “Whenever I feel like I’ve lost Matt forever, I take out this picture and stare out at the stars. I look at his face and I _know_ that, somewhere out there, he’s alive. Maybe he’s even looking at the stars at the same time as I am. And he feels…” She tilted her head at the photo. “…closer,” she said, softly. She looked up at him, then, and smiled. “That’s why I brought you something.”

Keith sat up straight and tucked his hands into his lap as Pidge reached deep into her shorts pocket. Slowly, she pulled out a square paper photograph. Keith stared at its back as she handed it to him; he hesitantly reached out a trembling hand and took it, flipping it over.

Shiro, five years younger, smiled up at him in his crisp tan-and-gold Galaxy Garrison University dress blues, his expression slightly stretched like he was holding back laughter. He was holding a 12-year-old Keith by the shoulders, who was out of uniform and wearing his favorite black alien-face tank-top under his jacket, beaming and sloppily saluting the camera with Shiro’s uniform cap on his head. It was the picture taken of them for the mentor sponsorship program at the end of first semester. The colors were faded from their once brilliant vibrance to almost sepia, and the edges of it were wrinkled and cracked from use.

“I found it while rifling through his room,” Pidge volunteered. “I thought you should have it.”

Keith’s breath hitched once, twice, and he barely saved the photo from a falling tear.

\--

“Shiro?”

Shiro looked over his shoulder at him from his place beside his bed, meticulously putting things in and then back out of his single small Garrison-issued travel bag to take with him onto the Spirit Horizon for the Kerberos mission. There was enough clutter spread out on his bed to fill it thrice over, and Shiro seemed to be struggling; his hair was ruffled and uncombed and he was wearing nothing but pajama pants, showing off his one-year-old top-surgery scars. He looked back to his work, frowning intently as he weighed a book and a tablet in each hand. “What’s up, buddy?”

Keith took in a slow breath, then let it out. Balling his fists at his side, he managed, “Do you _have_ to go to Kerberos? Can’t you just take another mission? Like to Ganymede? Or Mars?”

Shiro slowly set down his tablet and book and turned towards Keith, his brow furrowed. “Keith… This mission… There’s never been anything like it before. This is the farthest humanity has _ever_ traveled into space, and the Spirit Horizon is a top-of-the-line, experimental craft that took the Garrison’s best scientists two decades to design, build, and test. The samples and observations we take of Kerberos could help us understand its gravitational anomalies and be a major breakthrough in Dr. Holt’s extraterrestrial research. Being chosen to pilot this mission is the greatest honor I’ve ever received and could solidify my career.”

“I _know_ , I know, I know, I know,” Keith snapped, plopping himself down to sit against the wall.

“Besides, the ship launch is tomorrow, there’s not enough time to evaluate, pick, and train another pilot-”

“ _I said I know!_ We’ve been through this _before!_ ”

Shiro came over and kneeled down in front of him, settling onto his knees. “Then why do you keep asking the question?” he asked, softly.

Keith pulled his knees to his chest and angrily tucked his nose into them. “I don’t want you to leave,” he mumbled.

Shiro’s expression softened. “Ah… there it is.” He dipped his head down and sighed, then looked up again and put a gentle hand on Keith’s knee. “Keith… What part of this mission is freaking you out the most? Is it the time away? The danger?” Keith shrugged. “So… all of it, then.” Keith wrinkled his brow and frowned.

Shiro took a deep breath and rearranged himself until he was sitting cross-legged on the floor. Once he settled, he reached out for Keith’s hands. “Hey. Look at me.”

Keith rolled his eyes a little, but reluctantly met Shiro’s gaze and let him hold his hands. Shiro swiped his thumbs over his knuckles once and squeezed them before saying, “The mission is going to be one year, tops. If everything goes right, we should only be gone a little over ten months. The Garrison is even going to host a live-vlog series with us once a week until we pass the Uranus communications relay, so you’ll be able to _see_ me on top of our twice-a-week radio calls. And for when we drop out of instant communications range with Garrison Command?” 

Keith grimaced. “The most dangerous part of the mission, you mean?”

Shiro shook his head. “That’s what I’ve been _training_ for, Keith. I know the Spirit Horizon like I know the back of my own hand. I’ve been drilling myself endlessly for every possible scenario to hone my skills because I’ll have two lives in my hands, one of which is my best friend and the other the closest thing I have to a father figure. I’ve _earned_ my rank as the Garrison’s best pilot through three missions, and I take that designation seriously. _Look at me_.”

Keith clenched his jaw and raised his gaze again from where it wandered off.

Shiro furrowed his brow and smiled, bringing Keith’s hands together to clasp in both of his. “We’ll be _okay_. It _won’t_ be forever. And I’m _coming back_.”

Keith stared him down. “Promise?”

Shiro hesitated for a long moment. A heavy tension stretched between them as the silence settled into the room, suffocating and stifling.

Slowly, Shiro blinked and looked at him with an expression that was as serious as the grave.

“I promise.”

\--

Keith stared up at Black.

The Lion had been offline and cold for over three weeks, now. Hunk, Pidge, and Coran scoured every millimeter of her body and internal systems, and for all intents and purposes, she should be fully operational – but she wasn’t. When Allura reached out to her, or when the Paladins reached out to her, by themselves or through their Lions, they were only met with a dull ache. Something happened in their last fight with Zarkon that hurt her so much she went into a slumber with seemingly no intention of waking up.

And that terrified Keith.

Taking off his fingerless glove, he slowly pressed and splayed his hand out against the frigid metal of her paw. He closed his eyes and tried to feel for her presence. He’d only really connected with her once before, and she only allowed it for Shiro’s sake, but with effort he could feel her mind – a soft, subtle scratching at the back of his head like rustling leaves, as opposed to the soulful hum of the other Lions and the perfectly attuned, resonating notes of Red.

“Hey, girl,” he said quietly. Feeling no change, he continued. “It’s me. Uh, Keith. Um.” He pushed harder against her paw. “It would be really great if you could wake up. We’re all really worried. Shiro’s still missing and we need your help to find him. Please.”

Nothing.

Keith opened his eyes and slumped against her, sliding down to sit on the floor. “It’s been almost a month,” he murmured. “The others are giving up on him. Allura… Allura held a meeting earlier today. We’re-” his voice choked up and he dragged a hand down his face, working his throat and blinking away the threat of tears. He took a deep, shuddering breath, then managed, “We’re calling off the search indefinitely. We’re designating a new Black Paladin.”

The blank, hollow look in Allura’s eyes and the dead tone of her voice still haunted him from the meeting. She’d stood at the head of the table and leaned on it, hunch-backed, taking steady care to look each of them directly in the eye. She didn’t even react when Keith cussed her out and kicked over a chair. Coran grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and marched him out of the room and into the hall, where he stood between Keith and the door with his hands on his hips, sharply scolding, “ _Watch your tongue, son. Can’t you see this is as tortuous for Allura as it is for you? She’s having a hard enough time forcing herself to do what she knows to be right without you making this even more painful for us all._ ”

Keith went back hours later and hunted her down to tearfully apologize. Allura cried with him and they both ended up hugging for a long while.

It felt like something final.

“I’m scared, Black,” he whispered. “I had to learn how to live without him once before. I don’t think I can do it again.” His eyes fell shut. “Please. We need you. I need you. _Shiro_ needs you.”

Black’s faint whispering slowly swelled to a soulful thrum, and Keith felt the metal of her paw vibrate with the force of her power revving up. He threw himself to his feet and stumbled away from her, throwing his head back to stare up and watch the yellow of her eyes flicker and then beam on at full-power.

Black angled her lead lower as if she was looking down at him, and Keith’s heart leapt into his throat. She lowered her maw and opened it once she reached the ground, inviting him into the cockpit.

Keith sprinted inside and vaulted into the pilot seat, trying not to hyperventilate. His hands latched onto the controls and he took deep, shuddering breaths, trying to stay connected to her.

The imprint of Shiro was in every element of her systems, her mind attuned so flawlessly to his that Keith could almost feel him in the cockpit with him. He gulped, then said, “Okay, girl. Good girl. Welcome back. And thank you.” He felt her slowly sit up, a low vibration through his chest signaling her acknowledgement. “Now help me. _What happened to Shiro?_ ”

The purple lights in the cockpit flared brilliantly, and he was suddenly transported back to the last struggle with Zarkon and his mech – only instead of him in Red, he was experiencing it through Black and Shiro’s consciousness.

He saw Zarkon grab hold of Voltron’s head – grab hold of Black – and channel his weapon’s energy into her. Shiro struggled against it until Black urged him to use the black bayard with her. Shiro instantly followed her lead and activated the bayard, igniting Voltron’s sword into its full power, and from there all the Paladins and Lions used all of their energy and quintessence to rip Zarkon’s mech asunder, forcing it to explode into a supernova of brilliant light.

The moment the energy of the blast hit Black, she surged into a state of pure terror, feeling Zarkon’s quintessence drain to nothing but the faintest wisp. Shiro reached out and poured his quintessence into hers, grounding her to the present with him instead of her time under Zarkon’s hand, but her systems and consciousness were already a quarter of the way through a purge to rid herself of Zarkon’s energy forever. She knew that Shiro would not survive the combined influxes of energy, so she ripped open a hole in the fabric of space and shoved him through it. 

Then all went dark.

Keith jolted back to awareness with a gasp and struggled to catch his breath. He looked frantically around the cockpit and through Black’s screens to the hangar, scrambling to organize his thoughts. “So you saved him?!” he blurted. “You saved him? Where is he?!”

He felt Black’s quintessence reach out into the universe in search of Shiro’s. A minute passed. Two minutes. Then five.

Then twenty.

He felt, again, as Black’s consciousness shifted abruptly into something cold, reserved, and aching. She withdrew her quintessence and sat, her mind heavy and still.

“Did you find him?” Keith whispered. It sounded pathetic even to his own ears.

The low, single vibration that thrummed through his chest indicated no.

Keith licked his lips, then swallowed thickly. “Is he dead?”

The responding thought from Black was so clear, so absolute, so final, and so immediate, that Keith was convinced there was at least one cosmic truth.

_I will feel it when he dies._

Keith allowed a shudder of relief to roll through him, then curled up into a ball in the pilot seat. “But… we can’t find him. He’s still… He’s still lost.”

The air tingled with a wave of static as Black’s grief merged with his.

\--

The knock on the classroom door made everyone’s heads snap up. Dr. Jackson stuttered to a halt in her lecture and turned towards the door, where the head Academy counselor, Dr. Laurens, was poking her head through with a little wave. “Excuse me, Dr. Jackson? We need to pull Mr. Kogane from class.”

Keith warily started packing up his book and materials as Dr. Jackson replied, “Why, of course, honey. No harm done.”

His backpack slung over his shoulder, Keith slipped out of class and away from the soft pattering of scathing comments. Dr. Laurens, a thin, shrewd, white blonde woman, put her hand on his shoulder and gave him a sad smile. Commander Iverson was standing further down the hall alongside Mission Control Administrator Smirnov, both of their berets off and held loosely at their waists.

Keith’s stomach turned to ice.

The three adults led him away down the halls until they eventually arrived at the counseling center. Dr. Laurens led them into her office – a large, open space, painted in soft pastels and lit by sunlight from a huge window – and shut the door behind her, guiding Keith onto the couch and Administrator Smirnov into one of two low-sitting chairs. She took the other, leaving Commander Iverson to stand at the door with his arms crossed, flicking his one eye rapidly around the room and looking like this was the last place in the world he wanted to be.

Dr. Laurens placed a tissue box in front of Keith. He resisted the urge to puke on it. She turned to Smirnov and prompted, “Go on.”

Administrator Smirnov, an old, gray-haired, bookish white man with narrow glasses, spun his beret in his hands as he announced in his deep, Cronkite-esque voice, “At 1:42AM this morning, we received a burst transmission from the vessel Spirit Horizon. The only way we receive this kind of data dump is if the craft underwent what we call a CIE, or ‘Catastrophic Impact Event.’ The data within the packet registered that the ship descended on Kerberos at three-hundred-and-twelve times the recommended descent velocity. It would’ve been completely destroyed on impact.”

“What are you saying,” Keith asked, numb.

“We investigated further to verify the data and spent the better part of the day redirecting one of our Neptune satellites to take images of the alleged crash site, and at 2:34 this afternoon we visually confirmed that the Spirit Horizon was destroyed. Our current leading theory is pilot error.”

“What the fuck are you saying?” Keith snarled, trembling.

Smirnov grimaced. “All evidence suggests the pilot miscalculated the gravitational influences of the descent. The Kerberos crew is lost.”

Keith slapped the tissue box into the wall and surged to his feet, screaming, “ _What the fuck are you saying?_ ”

Strong, weathered hands seized his shoulders and spun him around until he was staring into Iverson’s pitying face.

“Takashi is dead, son.”

\--

Keith jolted awake with a gasp.

Throwing off the covers, he sat up out of bed and buried his hands in his hair, forcing himself to breathe. His dreams about losing his father were always bad, but the day the Garrison officers told him Shiro was dead also left a scar that tormented him at night, even after he smuggled out that picture of the Spirit Horizon intact and abandoned on the surface of Kerberos from Iverson’s office.

Most nights Keith could just look around his room, reassure himself that he was in the Castle and thus so was Shiro, and go back to sleep – but there were some nights, like tonight, that a cloying feeling of unease settled in the back of his chest and refused to leave until he went to Shiro and made sure he was breathing.

Sighing, Keith reluctantly shoved his feet into his boots and grabbed his jacket off the foot of the bed before walking out the door of his room, shrugging it on. He quickly made his way down the Paladin hallway to Shiro’s room and knocked on the door. “It’s me. Can I come in?”

Keith tilted his head forwards to listen for an answer, but none came. “Well, at least you’re finally sleeping,” he drawled, and pressed the hand-plate to open the door. He walked in, and-

Shiro wasn’t there.

The unease spread up into his throat and down into his stomach. He turned and hurried out, jogging to the training room. He got there in less than five minutes, and opening the doors, he ran into the cavernous dark deck and yelled, “Shiro?!”

After getting no response, he ran out and down the halls towards the kitchen, but when he poked his head in, Shiro wasn’t there, either. “Shiro?!”

Keith ran up and down the halls, calling out Shiro’s name, until the only place he hadn’t checked was the control room. He sprinted there as fast as he could and burst through the doors. “ _Shiro!_ ”

The dim room lit up as it sensed his presence, illuminating the central screen. Shiro’s Paladin picture was minimized into a side screen, next to an infinitely flashing _SIGNAL LOST_.

Everything from the past month came crashing back to Keith, and he fell to his knees.

Rapid footsteps came running up behind him, paused, and then continued running to his side. Lance dropped down next to him and wrapped him up in a hug, and Keith broke. Sobs wracked his chest and he buried his face into Lance’s shoulder, clinging to his robe. Lance held him tighter, and Keith heard his breath start hitching, too.

It wasn’t long before another pair of footsteps ran up to the door, and then Hunk joined them, wrapping them both up in his embrace, then Pidge, squirming her way under Lance’s arm to hug Keith. Allura and Coran arrived moments later; Allura folded herself against Lance’s back, resting her head against Hunk’s arm, and Coran mirrored Hunk on the other side of the hug pile, doing his best to hold them all. Together, they wept and grieved.

Eventually, they all started winding down and settling back, sniffling and wiping away their tears until they were all sitting in a rough cluster. Keith pulled his and Shiro’s photo out of his jacket pocket and stared at it.

“You gonna be okay, Keith?” Lance prompted gently, rubbing his back.

Keith took one last, lingering look at Shiro’s face, then looked up at the sea of stars that filtered through the windows above them. Pidge’s words came back to him, and against all odds, he smiled. “Yeah… Yeah. I think…” He looked away and met the expectant gazes of his team, his friends – his family.

“I think I’m ready to move on.”

**Author's Note:**

> The photograph referenced in this fic is a direct reference to a [beautiful piece](http://platonicharmonics.tumblr.com/post/158417340253/velocesmells-shiro-20-keith-12-it-seems-to-be) done by velocesmells. Her broganes art has a special place in my heart and actually inspired a lot of my headcanons for the pair.


End file.
